Episode Details

Rumble link Bitchute link

I first seriously read Emerson for an American Renaissance seminar at San Francisco State University in the mid-80s. I was the only student who actually enjoyed the sonorous cadences of the sage of Concord. My classmates thought I was bluffing, or, failing that, perverse.

Emerson’s encomiums to authenticity, nature, and the transcendent resonated with me. This was the best of the American spiritual inheritance, of what Harold Bloom called the American religion. Among all the cults and Bible-thumpers and maladapted European sects, Emerson’s Unitarianism was uniquely nourishing, and uniquely “American in a good sense.” It had inspired Thoreau, a hero of my days in the high school library. I recognized belatedly that this was the religion I had inherited, to the extent I had inherited any, from my grandmother, a member of the congregation at the famous Frank Lloyd Wright church in Madison, WI.

Unfortunately, by the late 20th century, Unitarianism had abandoned its Enlightenment roots and become a religion of “anything goes.” As long as you can sing Kumbaya off-key, you’re in. Today we have Unitarian ministers who don’t believe in God. No doubt there will be Satanist Unitarian ministers in the not-too-distant future. (Will they perform human sacrifices during Kumbaya sing-alongs?)

Unitarianism and America have gone crazy. That is one reason I accepted Islam (“Unitarianism with camels”) and eventually found my way to Morocco. I now find myself agreeing with E. Michael Jones and the Ayatollah Khomeini that America is “the Great Satan.”

But is that Emerson’s fault? Dr. Jones thinks the sage of Concord was some kind of proto-satanist who bears responsibility for all that followed. That may not be as unfair as blaming Jesus for the Crusades and Inquisition, but still.

Below is my recent debate with E. Michael Jones on the question, “Was Emerson a satanist?” Note that Emersonian Unitarianism, like Islam, rejects the Trinity in favor of Divine Unity, focuses on Jesus’s message rather than his mode of death, and does not accept the doctrine of Original Sin.

Was Emerson a Satanist? Kevin Barrett Debates E. Michael Jones

KB: Well, we'll talk about that more, but here's another interesting long story on the demographic revolution. Everybody who is susceptible to the propaganda from the modern secular world pushing us towards hedonism, individualism, and anomie will not have children, or very few, whereas the minority of people who are immune to that propaganda and continue to have large families will leave all of humanity as their descendants. And those people are, by and large, religious.

So demographers are noticing that the future is likely to be more religious than the present, because that minority of people who are still having large families is disproportionately religious. And that's going to lead up to our discussion of Emerson and matters of religion, because religion is going to matter in a world that goes back to religion.

EMJ: Yeah, well, the meek will inherit the earth.

Was it Emerson who that said that?

No. Quite the opposite.

And that leads us to “Cherchez le Juif,” which is the article that set off the Emerson debate. That was your latest article in the form of a book review of La D